The year 1836 rolled up and so did Ms. Owens -- who thought she was engaged. Quite displeased with her appearance, a confounded Lincoln instantly regretted his promise and grappled with how to handle the situation. Lincoln later wrote: "...when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother ; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles, but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years ; and, in short, I was not at all pleased with her."
Lincoln to Mary Owens: I
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